For nearly half a century, until it closed in the 1980s, Delerno's on Pink Street was a fixture of Old Metairie. Chef and owner J.B. Delerno turned out standard New Orleans and Italian cooking, like stuffed artichokes, turtle soup, seafood gumbo and fried seafood.

Delerno also played a role in expanding the local culinary canon. In the 1970s, when eating crawfish normally meant a trip to Cajun country, he introduced a "crawfish festival platter" with crawfish salad, jambalaya, crawfish pie, crawfish etouffee, crawfish-stuffed pepper and fried crawfish tails. A second, more upscale version of Delerno's opened in 1990, but without the involvement of Delerno family.